IN THE MIDST OF ALARUMS
Luxuriously hammocked in the delightful cool of the broad veranda
surrounding three sides of the C Bar ranch house, Grace Carter lay
dreamily watching the shadow-dance on the slope of the fast purpling
range. Outside, the sun devils were whirling maliciously, here and there
kicking up a dust-spout in the wake of the sadly-tormented breezlets
which foolishly ventured out in that July inferno. Overhead the sun was
herding his cloud flocks to their fold in the brassy west, wearily
dipping out of sight momentarily amidst their billowy fleeces. There was
an intolerable shimmer on the low-lying adobe flats to the east, and the
sea of alfalfa to the north drooped flaccidly in the furnace heat.
Her neglected novel lay limply on a bamboo tabour at her side and an
open letter lay where it had fallen unrecked on the veranda floor. On
the wide rail shelf blazed a glory of multi-colored cacti artistically
potted in harmoniously contrasting cool-gray jars. A luxuriant wistaria
at the porch angle behind her supplied the requisite foil for as perfect
a picture as ever filled the eye of mortal man, and Douglass, coming
noiselessly through the fetlock-deep dust of the driveway, reined up his
tired horse in eager admiration.
The girl, lulled to sleep by the languor of the hour, was very good to
look, upon and his eyes drank in her beauty greedily. Her hands, locked
together under the shapely head, were hidden in the wealth of golden
brown hair that somehow had escaped its fastenings and lay in an aureole
of glory about her delicately-chiseled face. The wide sleeves of the
thin lavender-tinted silk kimono had fallen away from her arms,
revealing their soft rounded contour and exquisite modeling. The
clinging stuff of her filmy gown betrayed every perfection of outline,
and peeping over one edge of the hammock was just a ravishing suspicion
of silk-stockinged foot and ankle, dainty as a child's. Her skin, tanned
golden tawny to the limit of the sun's daily caress, betrayed its true
coloring in the creamy white hollow of her uncovered throat, where the
treacherous fabric had failed in its trust. The lips, not too full but
rather of a gentle firmness, were slightly parted, revealing well-shaped
teeth, and the eyelashes and brows were long and beautifully arched.
As he sat unconsciously glowering at her, she moved slightly and the
kimono slipped to one side, exposing the bodice of thin stuff beneath.
Through its folds the rise and fall of her bosom were distinctly
perceptible. He whirled his horse with a deep-chested oath and rode
unseen to the stables. Taking something from his saddle-roll, he tiptoed
back to the veranda and without once looking at the sleeping girl laid
it on the open novel.
Waking an hour later, she chanced to look casually at the tabour. With a
little cry of pleasure she picked up the heart-shaped bit of moist moss
with its embedded cluster of mountain heart's-ease and her eyes were
very soft as she laid it to her lips. There was no uncertainty as to
their source; she knew that these were the first-offerings of the
season, procurably only in the hardly penetrable canyons of the range,
more than twenty dusty miles away, and she felt very grateful. She wore
them on her corsage that night at dinner and later, coming on him
smoking his post-prandial pipe under the stars, thanked him graciously.
As he muttered the conventional commonplaces of depreciation, his
gleaming eyes were riveted for a moment on the flowers. Something in the
intensity of his glance struck her like a blow; she paled and
instinctively covered the blossoms with both hands. Instantly her mind
reverted to her afternoon's siesta and her cheeks flamed with
consciousness. She was far from unsophistication; she had seen men look
so before but never with a similar acceleration of her heart-beats,
never with this fierce resentment which now coursed though her whole
being. She was quivering with a sense of vague outrage and her breath
came fast and hard. Then with the unaccountability of the unfathomable
feminine, she deliberately detached one of the dainty blooms and,
standing with the filmy laces on her bosom brushing against his chest,
deftly fastened it on the lapel of his coat. After all, the man had
ridden far that day for her pleasure, and she smiled inscrutably as she
recalled, on retiring that night, how his hands had clenched and his
breast heaved when she had given him the flower. The rest of the violets
were sadly wilted now and she threw them out of the window with a
sudden impatient anger.
But an hour later a great horned owl, watching from a fence post the
moonlit sward in front of the veranda in hopes of a possible mouse for
his belated supper, hooted his contemptuous derision of another
white-robed hunter groping in the shadows. And over at the bunkhouse a
man with self-revilement was fumbling with a spray of heart's-ease and
looking into vacancy.
When she came down to breakfast the next morning Douglass was already
far out on the range. He had thrown his whole heart and soul into his
work and the effect was already visible to the most casual observer. The
ranch grounds had been thoroughly policed, all the halting projects of
Matlock's regime had been spurred to finality, and cleanliness, method
and order had replaced the previous chaos and squalor of the C Bar.
Everything radiated the new manager's virility and energy. The renovated
ditches were glistening bank full with their life-giving floods; the
alfalfa and grain fields, now properly kept and irrigated, were billowy
seas of emerald fore-promise; everything betokened activity and thrift.
In three short months he had wrought wonders with the really excellent
material at hand and the C Bar was fast regaining its old-time prestige
as the best-ordered ranch west of the Divide.
Carter was openly enthusiastic over the wisdom of his choice of
managers, a wisdom which he shrewdly supplemented by giving Douglass
full sway in the conduct of affairs. At the latter's suggestion, he went
East in June to secure certain necessary machinery, and the letter
which had lain beneath her hammock the previous day was one written to
Grace by her brother announcing his intention to have their mother
accompany him on his return. The girl, interested by the novelty of her
new environment, had elected to remain on the ranch, laughingly
asserting that it was a precautionary measure in her brother's behalf,
as she was sure Douglass had designs on the picturesque old ranch house
and would tear down and rebuild it if not restrained by her presence.
The real truth was that she knew in his loyal respect for her he would
abstain from excesses in which he might be tempted to indulge in the
absence of that restraint. She was not quite sure of the moral fortitude
of this erratic young man, and even temporary interference with his work
was a contingency calamitous to the C Bar interests. Up to last night
she had felt only a great self-complacency over the result; but this
morning, toying with her usually much-relished berries and cream, she
was obsessed by the insistent thought that her self-congratulation was,
after all, a trifle premature. The longer she reflected, the more she
regretted that she had not gone back East with her brother. Not that she
was in the slightest degree apprehensive of any untoward futurity; it
was only that a new and unexpected factor had intruded itself into her
already perfected scheme for the restoration of her brother's
fortune--and the reclamation of Ken Douglass.
Women are usually creatures of one idea, and she was no exception to the
general rule; her whole mentality had been concentrated on this one
achievement, and here at the very outset the fair fabric of her dreams
was crumbling. She was oppressed with a sense of impending defeat that
grew more and more disquieting as she recalled the stories she had heard
of his indomitable will and pertinacity of purpose. She had been much
impressed by a remark made by old Hank Williams on the morning of their
first encounter, "Ken allus gits what he goes after!"
At the time she deemed it a very grand, almost heroic attribute, but
just now it was fraught with a new significance. Something in her
cogitations sent the blood to her face, then it receded, leaving her
pale. She pushed the untasted food away impatiently and rose from the
table. Going swiftly to her room, she took from between the leaves of
her diary a cluster of withered flowers and stepped to the open window.
In the very act of their contemptuous casting away she hesitated
irresolutely, looked at them once more compassionately and replaced them
in the morocco-bound booklet. Then with an air of renewed determination
she returned to her breakfast and ate everything comestible in sight.
That night when Douglass returned, he bore in his arms a tiny antelope
kid which he laughingly entrusted to her tender mercies. In his ride
over the range he had come upon one of the pitiful little tragedies
common to the great Outdoors with its unending struggle of the weak
against the strong and merciless. In a little hollow of the foothills
its mother, hamstrung by a pair of wolves and exhausted by her gallant
fight against the inevitable, was making a last frantic effort to
defend her offspring cowering between her feet. The revolver flashed
twice vengefully and then a third time mercifully, for the poor doe's
condition was hopeless. But of this third shot Douglass said nothing to
Miss Carter, simply saying that the doe had succumbed to her injuries.
Neither did he deem it advisable to tell her that with the economy and
thrift inseparable from plainsmen, he had sent the carcass of the
martyred mother to one of his outlying camps to eke out its larder, and
so save the otherwise necessary sacrifice of a valuable yearling for
camp meat. Nor did he mention the fact that this had occurred quite
early in the afternoon, necessitating his "packing" the helpless kid
about on his saddle for many weary miles.
The girl's eyes had filled at his simple recital and she cooed
assuringly to the kid, which nestled contentedly in her arms. But
something in her eyes and about her lips as he threw the wolf pelts at
her feet caused the man to look at her curiously. He had seen that
expression once before on the face of the wife of the dead sheepman when
some one had told her of the finding of a C Bar rider with a load of
buckshot through his heart some weeks after the assassination of her
husband. There had been no over-officious zeal displayed by the
authorities in their attempts to fix the responsibility of the man's
death, despite the fact that the sheepman's son possessed one of the
only three shotguns in the county, the deceased being reputedly a "bad
man" and notoriously the creature of Matlock. He it was who had assisted
in the fleecing of poor Braun, and the general consensus of opinion was
that "he only got what was coming to him!" The code of the range is as
drastic as it is simple.
"It's up to you now to mother this goat, Miss Grace," he said
whimsically; "I'll send a man in to Tin Cup to-morrow for a gunnysackful
of any pap-maker you nominate. We've got to assume the responsibility of
him, his mother having come to grief on your demesne. When you are ready
to christen him I'll get Red to stand godfather for him--that is, if you
have no other preferred sponsor in mind."
The girl looked up quickly; his tone seemed a bit patronizing and to her
mind altogether too familiar. It was an opportune time to inaugurate a
new order of things which all day she had been formulating.
"I shall name him now," she said, icily. "He shall be known as Buffo and
you are his sponsor."
"Buffo--a buffoon!" He laughed a little constrainedly. "Well, I think
the name is appropriate. He is a fool and so was his mother before him.
Otherwise they'd have never ventured in where naught but angels have any
license to tread."
She bit her lip in chagrin as he lifted his sombrero and rode
nonchalantly away. The intended rebuke had recoiled upon her and she was
furious at her impotence. Retreating to the kitchen, she somewhat curtly
ordered the cook--old Abigail Williams, sister to the postmaster, who in
order to preserve the proprieties had been engaged in that capacity--to
prepare some nourishment for her charge.
"We've got to feed the thing," she snapped in a tone strangely variant
from her endearing coo of a few minutes before.
Abbie nodded briskly: "I'll fix up a rag on a bottle of new milk. I've
raised 'em before. We bed two on em oncet--Hank ez thet foolish about
sich critters."
"It'll make quite a peart pet," went on the garrulous old body. "An' I
s'pose ye'll be fer givin' it sum name? Ourn was Belshazzar an' Sappho.
Hank got the buck's name outen a book where it said in slick soundin'
poetry as how Belshazzar was king an' Belshazzar waz lord. Thet buck
were sure the mos' uppity critter! Nuthin' waz good enuf fer him to
sociate with and he herded by hisself mos'ly. He waz allus on thu prod,
stompin' aroun' darin' thu other critters to fite. He waz powerful
or'nary, that Belshazzar, lordin' it over everybody an' allus huntin'
trouble.
"He waz mean to thu she-goat an' treated her scan'lous! The more she
tried to be sociable an' nice the more biggoty he got. She'd go up'n
nuzzle 'im an' he'd back off an' look at her scornful and walk away high
an' mighty-like on thu tips uv he's toes, jest like he's walkin' on
aigs. He waz allus hurtin' uv her feelin's but he didn't seem to care
none. An' thu poor critter would tag after 'im an' humor 'im ontil she
made me sick! If he got outen her sight she'd blat an' take on suthin'
drefful, an' one spring when he jumped thu fence an' went out
gallivantin' with thu wild ones fer a spell, she went loco an' actooly
cried tears! That's sure right. I seed 'em.
"That was the spring that Ken Douglass hit this range. One day when she
is actin' more foolish than, most he pats her on thu back an' calls her
'Sappho' an' spouts a lot o' hifalutin dago talk an' wipes her eyes with
his new silk han'kerchief--really! Tenderfeets air cu'r'ous critters an'
Ken acts loco a leetle hisself sumtimes. He takes a heap o' int'rest in
her after that, and fetches her apples n' things every time he goes to
Tin Cup. An' one day I hears that durn fool say to Sappho as how he
wishes he was a goat so that he could teach her to fergit her sorrer.
Did ye ever hear anythin' so plumb ridic-lous! Then one day he rides up
to thu gate an' says: 'Miss Abbie'--he kin be real polite when he
wants--'there's rejoicin' in Lesbos to-day. Belshazzar has come back!'
Then he rides off laffin, an' I gits my sunbonnit and hikes down to ther
pastur'. Sure 'nough, thar's thet fool buck, an' for the fust time
_he's_ nuzzlin' her! An' thet Sappho she waz so foolish happy that I
wanted to shake her."
Grace put the kid down very gently on the floor. "I had thought of a
name for him but--"
A shadow darkened the door. "Hello, Buffo. You getting your first
lesson, too?"
The girl stiffened instantly. "I shall call him that, after all. Thank
you, Mr. Douglass, for strengthening my resolution."
"And as his godfather I, of course, must be Momus," said Ken, nothing
abashed, though his eyes glittered. And in a not unpleasant if somewhat
strident voice, he mischievously sang:
"Why gall and wormwood in a throat
Designed for hydromel!
Far better be a Buffo goat
And court the booze bot-tel."
Her lips curled at what she mistook for an implied threat. With all the
hauteur she could summon to her aid, she swept him with her scorn. "Oh!
If you feel a really irresistible desire to get drunk," she said, "that
is a waste of talent far more appreciable by the critics of the Alcazar;
my brother, being unfortunately absent, will be desolated at missing
_this_ performance."
She regretted her temerity even before she had finished. His face seemed
to age as she looked. A man putting such indignity upon him, at first
view of that face, would have hastily laid his hand on his pistol-butt;
the girl placed hers tremblingly above her heart.
The man's self-restraint was wonderful. For an interminable moment which
seemed an age to the frightened women--for even old Abbie was blanched
with comprehension and stood with clasped hands and white lips--he was
silent. Then in a voice whose calmness made the girl shiver with an
undefinable fear, he said:
"That is twice to-day, Miss Carter, that you have been pleased to insult
me. I am most unfortunate in having incurred your disfavor. My intrusion
here was to acquaint you with the news that your brother, accompanied by
your mother, will be here to-morrow night, a rider having just brought a
telegram to that effect. It will take me but a few minutes to gather my
effects. I will submit a full account of my stewardship to Mr. Carter
to-morrow--from Tin Cup. It will be sufficiently full and comprehensive
enough to obviate the necessity of any explanations on your part. Have
I your permission to retire?"
Unable to think coherently she mutely nodded assent. Hat in hand, he
turned on the threshold. "The performance will begin at ten, to-morrow
night," he said. "Abbie, don't put any wormwood in Buffo's milk. It'll
make him uppish."
But the gods who dispose of man's proposals ordained that Douglass was
not to leave the C Bar that night. As he swung out into the moonlight
his nostrils were assailed with the pungent fumes of burning hay and a
man came running toward him.
"The stacks have been fired and the ditches cut! Red saw one of them and
is on his trail!" Afar in the starlight a pistol snapped viciously; it
was answered by a louder detonation, succeeded almost instantly by the
fainter whip of the pistol. Then after a few seconds' interim came yet
again the fainter report and all was silent.
"That's Red's .45," said the man with curt positiveness. "T'other must
have had a Winchester, and he didn't fire but one shot. Red shot last."
They were running full speed toward the burning stacks and Ken chose to
waste no breath in speculative reply. But he was seeing a different red
than that of the flaming hay as he recalled Williams's warning: "Look
out fer Matlock. He's a pizen skunk and he'll stoop to anythin' ter play
even." The fire being incendiary, admitted but one deduction, and he was
praying his gods to give this man into his hands.
"'Twan't Matlock," said Red tersely, in answer to the interrogation in
his comrade's eyes as he rode in to where they were standing helplessly
watching the destruction of what was fortunately the smallest stack on
the ranch, Ken's masterly directions executed by willing hands having
extinguished the others. "'Twer that mizzuble Mexican side-kicker o'
hisn, an' the damned varmint nearly got me. Shot his hoss an' he come
back with his rifle. Got him second shot."
"Yeh fired three," said the man who had summoned Douglass, tentatively.
Red took a chew of tobacco. "Yep. Only winged him an' he possumed on me.
Stuck his knife inter me but she glanced on a rib. He's daid now." His
voice was unemotional but his face was white. Douglass, watching him
sharply, laid his hand on the other's glove.
"Better get up to the shack, Red," he said quietly, "You've lost a lot
of juice."
The man smiled wanly, reeled In his saddle, and clutching fruitlessly at
the horn, slipped limply down into Douglass's supporting arms.
Subsequent examination revealed that he had also been wounded by the
Mexican's rifle shot. There was a ragged hole through the fleshy part of
his thigh and hemorrhage had been profuse. Declining all offers of
assistance, Douglass carried him to the bunkhouse and laid him on the
rough bed. Looking at the white face of the fellow before him, his mouth
resolved itself into a thin cruel line.
"By God, Matlock, you will pay in full for this!" He had unconsciously
sworn it aloud and the men gathered around the bed of their stricken
comrade knew that supreme sentence had been passed. They made no
comment, but as Douglass, rolling up his sleeves, bent to the clumsy but
efficient surgery that was to save Red's life, one of them nudged his
neighbor and said inconsequentially, "Red weighs good two hunnerd!" And
he looked admiringly at the ripples playing silkily under the bronze
satin of his foreman's arms.
But far out on the prairie, riding in headlong guilty haste from the
Nemesis that his craven heart dreaded as even his cowardice had never
dreaded anything before, Matlock shivered telepathically and turned in
his saddle. A startled night-fowl fluttered uncannily over his head and
he crouched almost to his saddle-bow with terror. The flutter of
Azrael's wings seemed very close!
An hour later, as Douglass emerged from the bunkhouse, old Abigail
hesitatingly accosted him. "Yuah to come up to thu house, Ken, right
way! Now don' yuh be foolish, boy; remember she's only a gel--an' young
at that!"
He patted the wrinkled hand laid on his arm but shook his head in grim
negation. "It isn't necessary, Abbie; you tell Miss Carter that it will
all be in the report to-morrow!" And he gently but firmly put aside her
restraining hand.
But the old woman was wise in her generation. "Look heah, Ken Douglass,"
she indignantly stormed; "don't yuh try no hifalutin with me. I ain't
goin' to be stood off with no such a bluff ez that! Who nussed yuh when
yuh got shot up by this yeah very mizzuble outfit las' summeh? Yuh come
along o' me without no moah talk. An' when yuh git theah yuh go down on
yuh stubboahn knees to that little angel an' promise thet yuh'll be
good."
He laughed quizzically. "Is that one of the conditions she imposes--that
getting down on my knees? I'm out of practice a little and my knees are
all blacked up from that fire. I'm afraid I'd soil that immaculate
carpet of hers."
"Yuh hev soiled a heap moah than her cyapet already," said the old woman
significantly, "an' yuh mind's been blacker than yuh knees. Did yuh
think she was one o' them dance-hall huzzies yuh've been herdin' with
all yuh mean life? An' up tha' she sits cryin'--"
"Crying!" said the man sharply, and without another word he strode after
the doddering old woman, who had knowingly turned even as she spoke.
As he entered the living-room the girl rose with an involuntary cry. His
hair, eyebrows and mustache had been badly singed, his face was
smoke-grimed and dirty, great holes had been burned in the thin shirt,
the flesh showing angrily red through the rents. He was in sharp
contrast with her own white daintiness as he stood there grim and
forbidding, but she thought she had never looked upon a manlier man.
"I inferred from what Abbie said that you wished to see me?" The tone
was cool and even but respectful.
"Yes--I wished--I thought--" she faltered incoherently, looking
appealingly at him. But he only waited impassively, and the girl
nervously clasped her hands.
"Tongue burned too?" snapped Abigail, with withering sarcasm, glowering
wrathfully at him; the girl went up to him quickly, her eyes luminous
with compassion.
"Oh! You are injured--you are suffering--I did not know--"
"It is nothing--merely a few slight scorches. Pray do not be concerned
about it. And I am glad to assure you that McVey will recover. The
bullet--" At the white terror which crept into the girl's face he
stopped abruptly, clipping the words between his teeth and cursing his
inadvertence.
"The bullet--McVey--I do not understand," she was wild-eyed now with
fear and her voice was very faint. Old Abigail with an incredibly quick
movement caught her around the waist.
"Sit down, honey, and we'll tell you about it. There! Thet's a dear.
Matlock an' one uv his critters fired the haystacks an' cut the ditches
so's Ken wouldn't hev no water to save 'em with. An' Red he see one uv
'em ridin' off an' runs him down an' shoots him up right! But the ornary
cuss shoots back an' Red gets it in ther laig an' thet's all they is to
it. Don't yuh worrit none; we only lost thu leetlest stack o' ther
bunch."
"And the other--the one who ran away?" asked the girl with quick
concern.
Abigail's lips curved in a grim smile. "Red shot three times. Once at
the hoss."